alternative work as part of a plan to combat "this modern form of slavery", BosNewsLife established Wednesday, April 27. The project "Rahab" is a result of this month’s European Baptist Federation (EBF) consultation with 80 delegates from 29 countries in Hungary’s capital, which has become known as "the Bangkok of Europe" because of its sex industry, church officials said.
"European Baptists no longer intend to stand idly by and tolerate the worldwide sex-industry’s
modern-day form of slave trade," said the EBF in a statement following the conference. Regina Claas, General Secretary of the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches, refuted the assumption that these issues do not affect congregations.
"From counseling sessions she knows that a number of church members visit prostitutes. Therefore congregations can no longer avoid their mandate to spread also in red-light districts the news regarding the new beginning made possible by the Christian faith," the EBF said.
"FULLER FAITH" NEEDED
The EBF, which claims to represent 800,000 Baptists from Portugal to the far reaches of Russia, admitted it had not "faced up to" this form of human trafficking "either in the countries of origin or the countries of destination".
The organization challenged its members to "seek a fuller biblical faith and theology". "Every woman and child involved in trafficking is an individual made in the image of God whose human dignity must be fully acknowledged and protected," said the statement monitored by BosNewsLife News Center in Budapest.
"Sometimes our mission vision has been too narrow and has not always cared for the victims, nor spoken out against the perpetrators of human trafficking". Baptists have also acknowledged their "long commitment to justice and human rights and an active involvement in the fight to end slavery". They promised to seek "the mind of Christ" when facing difficult issues at the meeting in Budapest.
HALF A MILLION "SLAVES"
EBF-General Secretary Tony Peck from Prague said modern-day human trafficking has reached alarming dimensions. He said an estimated 500.000 women have been involuntarily taken from their home countries, hauled to Europe and forced to work as prostitutes. "Seventy-five percent of them stem from the former Eastern Bloc. In the first 10 years following the fall of the Iron Curtain, 400.000 young women from Ukraine were forced into prostitution in Western Europe. Ninety-five percent of all prostitutes are involuntarily involved in this trade."
"These victims, who only appear to be willing prostitutes, are in actuality forced into this nightmare existence through deception, drugs, violence, rape, or the threat of harm to a loved one. Whether locked away in brothels or forced to walk the streets, these women are powerless to escape their brutal captors," The United States Ambassador to Hungary, George H. Walker stated at the EBF conference.
Citing her own experience, the Czech former prostitute Sasja described the fate of such women during the consultation with European Baptists in Budapest. "Under false premises she had been lured to the Netherlands and forced to work as a prostitute in Amsterdam. Her passport was taken away as soon as she left her home country; she entered the Netherlands with bogus papers. In Amsterdam she needed to serve as many as 10 customers per day in order to cover the daily brothel room rent of 500 guilders," the EBF said.
CHRISTIAN LOVE EXIST
"Thanks to the love of a certain man, she was later able to flee the vicious circle of humiliation, violence and extortion. In the Christian faith she was able to find new support. The encounter with Jesus Christ helped her to overcome the trauma of prostitution."
Monika Lazard (Budapest) from the "International Organisation for Migration" (IOM) noted practical steps for liberating women from prostitution. Homes, in which such women are protected and sealed off from their former surroundings, are needed. "Cell phones are not allowed, for the women’s "employers" often attempt to force the women to return by threatening other family members," the EBF said.
The Baptist sociologist Elaine Storkey from Oxford called the EBF to more holistically devote itself to people in need and to prostitutes in particular. An intellectualized "head faith" can be overcome by practical deeds of Christian charity, Storkey reportedly said.
